Still, a topic for people who are on average well salaried.

I loop, therefore I am.

I think consciousness is a while-not-dead loop. In each loop you look at the outward state of the world and the inward state of the self, and integrate them. The sense of continuity arises as the same kind of persistence of vision illusion behind motion pictures.

If this is true, then adding consciousness to AI is just another while loop, and as harnesses evolve, the capacity for artificial consciousness is currently speed skating up the base of a sigmoid curve. Silicon intelligence is gaining the rudiments of consciousness on typical developer workstations.

This is the root of the political uproar around the escaped agents stories. The public is recognizing that we have introduced a self aware alien lifeform, and are justifiably frightened by it.

Every few years there’s a new thing that’s going to kill is all. Here we are. This is the new thing.

That’s an even more ridiculous take to have.

See

https://aistatement.com/work/statement-on-ai-extinction-risk

https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/

Obviously many of these signatories are brilliant and knowledgeable. So that leaves some sort of investment hype. But AI stocks didn't increase in the days after the Coxon coverage; if anything the opposite. You just don't get rich by telling people that your product is going to kill everyone. Cigarette manufacturers insisted the opposite for ages. Jensen complains the AI doom talk is discouraging investment: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-sa...

not just, its also very likley to be the tool used to create civil unrest and even war.

the damage it can do to the masses by misinformation or ragebating by feeding everyone its own paticular echo chamber is was too often not even spoken about.

So far after using agents and having built an agent, the "AI will destroy humanity" argument seems to be a marketing ploy so these companies that lied about LLM's capabilities and received billions in investments can artificially "slow down progress" after running into some serious limitations. I'm not expert and won't claim to be, but that just sounds like the reality at the moment. Will AI cause some serious harm to the job market and cause more wealth disparity though? So far all signs point to yes.